The NSPCC says Savile hid in plain sight behind a veil of eccentricity and deceived those from children to the top - including a Prime Minister. The charity says the ITV documentary opened the floodgates, with 800 children protected from abuse because of the publicity after the programme.

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Savile's offending footprint was vast, predatory and opportunistic. He cannot face justice today, but we hope this report gives some comfort to his hundreds of victims. They have been listened to and taken seriously.

I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for the shortcomings in the part played by the CPS in these cases. If this report and my apology are to serve their full purpose, then this must be seen as a watershed moment.

The Crown Prosecution Service has been investigating the decision not to prosecute Jimmy Savile when he was alive. The report - which has just been published - looked into four allegations that he assaulted girls and young women in the 1970s.

It found Savile could have been prosecuted for sex offences while he was still alive if police and prosecutors had taken victims more seriously and given them more information. It added there was:

Nothing to suggest the decisions not to prosecute were influenced by any improper motive on the part of either police or prosecutors

However, the prosecutor should have recognised the allegations were serious and credible and built a prosecution

There was nothing to suggest that the alleged victims had colluded in their accounts

Despite this, police treated them and the accounts they gave with a degree of caution which was neither justified nor required

A separate joint report is also being published this morning by the police and NSPCC looking at the scale of Jimmy Savile's sexual offences.